WASHINGTON—President Trump touted U.S. progress in the race to next-generation 5G wireless infrastructure Friday—pushing back against critics who contend China is inching ahead—as his administration unveiled initiatives designed to advance the networks’ rollout.

Joined at the White House by hard-hat tower climbers, farmers and ranchers—representing groups that could benefit from 5G’s rollout in the U.S.—Mr. Trump said the emerging technology presents “astonishing and really thrilling opportunities.”

“The race to 5G is a race America must win,” he said, adding “it’s a race we will win.”

Next-generation 5G is expected to mark a significant step forward in wireless technology, boosting speeds dramatically and potentially fostering the development of applications such as self-driving vehicles, interconnected or “smart” cities, and linked devices in factories and homes.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman
Ajit Pai
earlier this year said U.S. wireless companies have established an early lead in 5G in some respects. Cellphone carriers have echoed that message by highlighting their first 5G investments. U.S. firms are expected to be testing more than 90 pilot network installations by the end of the year, for example.

But many experts say Chinese firms like Huawei Technologies Co. are playing a dominant role writing the 5G engineering standards that will decide how future networks function.

Huawei, already the world’s largest telecom equipment supplier, is further helped by China’s generous support for domestic 5G infrastructure projects, U.S. officials say. That could give China an advantage in marketing 5G around the world.

The president pushed back on critics who have advocated for a much larger government role in establishing a 5G network to counter China.

“We don’t want to do that,” he said, contending that relying on the private sector to build out networks would be both faster and better. Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers have advocated a more market-based approach to 5G in the U.S.

Following Mr. Trump’s remarks, Mr. Pai detailed two initiatives to boost the 5G effort, noting that “in the race to 5G, our early success is still early.”

One move would place a large amount of airwaves—roughly 3,400 megahertz in three different spectrum bands—on the auction block, giving wireless companies and others the airwave capacity to set up 5G networks. The FCC described the auction—now planned for December—as the largest in American history.

Another move would create a new $20 billion funding program to assist in deployment of broadband in hard-to-serve rural areas, which the FCC says will support future 5G technologies. The agency estimated the program—an extension of an existing connectivity program—will connect up to 4 million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed networks over the next decade.

FCC Commissioner
Jessica Rosenworcel,
a Democrat, said the administration has mishandled 5G rollout, hurting U.S. chances. “So far, this administration’s interventions on 5G have done more harm than good,” she said, citing tariffs on some 5G equipment made overseas as one example.

The question of who is actually winning the race to 5G is a complex one, several experts say.

Some said U.S. officials are looking at the race too narrowly, and should focus more on developing the applications that will use 5G capabilities. That is what allowed the U.S. to dominate the development of smartphones, cloud computing and other breakthroughs of the last decade, said
Chetan Sharma,
a consultant. Those new applications will include artificial intelligence and robotics, he said.

Some Wall Street observers, meanwhile, are skeptical the policies announced Friday would do much to change the daunting math for private-sector companies tasked with building the costly new networks across the U.S.

“For all the talk of internet-of-things and smart cities, nobody has really identified viable revenue models for a 5G network,” said
Craig Moffett,
a telecom industry analyst for research firm MoffettNathanson LLC. “Making it work will be mind-bogglingly expensive because you need small cells on every block,” he added.

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